Edoxen

Meeting Extension

A MeetingExtension is the profile mechanism — the way adopters extend the generic core without modifying it. Every core entity has an extensions: MeetingExtension[0..*] slot.

This is the ISO 8601-2 §15 profile mechanism. Adopters register a profile namespace (e.g. legco, us-congress, ietf, oiml) and define kind values within it.

Anatomy (1.0+)

# Profile-scoped extension carrying a list of typed key/value pairs.
class MeetingExtension
  attribute :profile, :string       # "legco", "ietf", "us-congress"
  attribute :kind, :string          # in-profile discriminator
  attribute :ref, :string           # URN of profile document
  attribute :attributes, ExtensionAttribute, collection: true
end

ExtensionAttribute is polymorphic on value type — six typed variants plus a type discriminator so consumers don’t have to re-parse strings back into Int/Float/Bool/Date:

class ExtensionAttribute
  attribute :key, :string

  # String variant — wire name `value` (1.0 back-compat).
  attribute :value, :string

  # Typed variants (1.0).
  attribute :integer_value, :integer
  attribute :float_value, :float
  attribute :boolean_value, :boolean
  attribute :date_value, :date
  attribute :date_time_value, :date_time

  # Wire discriminator: "string" | "integer" | "float" | "boolean" |
  # "date" | "datetime".
  attribute :type, :string

  def typed_value
    case type
    when "integer"  then integer_value
    when "float"    then float_value
    when "boolean"  then boolean_value
    when "date"     then date_value
    when "datetime" then date_time_value
    else value  # default to string (1.0 back-compat)
    end
  end
end

The 1.0 tighten (per the post-launch audit, TODO 47) made three changes:

  1. Documented kind and ref semantics. kind is the in-profile discriminator; ref is the URN of an external profile document.
  2. Removed the recursive extensions[] slot. No documented use case. Profiles needing nesting use dotted keys (vote.count, vote.method) in attributes[].
  3. Polymorphized ExtensionAttribute.value. Was String-only; now six typed variants + a type discriminator.

How adopters use it

  1. Pick a profile name (lowercase, hyphen-separated).
  2. Pick a kind for the extension type within that profile.
  3. Provide either ref (URN to external data) or attributes[] (inline).
  4. For each attribute, set type and populate the matching value field.
extensions:
  - profile: legco
    kind: vote_block
    ref: urn:legco:vote-block:2024-01-15:item-5
  - profile: ietf
    kind: wg_meeting_meta
    attributes:
      - key: wg_name
        type: string
        value: quic
      - key: draft_name
        type: string
        value: draft-ietf-quic-v2
      - key: quorum
        type: integer
        integer_value: 7
      - key: live_stream
        type: boolean
        boolean_value: true
      - key: start
        type: datetime
        date_time_value: 2026-07-04T10:00:00Z

Read the typed payload in Ruby via #typed_value:

attr = extension.attributes.find { |a| a.key == "quorum" }
attr.type            # => "integer"
attr.integer_value   # => 7
attr.typed_value     # => 7

1.0 back-compat

The bare value: String wire shape still parses — the gem routes it into the string variant, with type defaulting to "string". Old fixtures don’t need migration.

Why this design?

  • Generic core stays generic. Standards-body, parliamentary, technical, and corporate domains all share the same Meeting/Decision/Motion types.
  • Adopters own their extensions. A profile is a single namespace; no coordination needed with the core.
  • Discoverability. Consumers can ignore profile extensions they don’t understand; they can list all extensions for a profile they do.
  • Typed values. No more int_value: "7" parsing on read — the type is preserved end-to-end.
  • No recursion. YAGNI; dotted keys cover the same ground without the complexity.

Reference profiles

See also